It was the weekend of the allegedly “random” murders of helpless, law-abiding women by violent homeless men with criminal records and histories of mental illness who had somehow been given the freedom to roam city streets.
The three female victims represented an age spectrum from young (Kupfer) to near-retirement (Shells). They also represented a spectrum of races: Shells was black; Go, Asian; and Kupfer, white. What those women had in common were alleged assailants who had been in and out of the criminal justice system for years and were obviously mentally unbalanced, whether because of drugs or other problems. The three women also lived in notoriously “blue” urban areas cursed with both surging crime and foolishly progressive attitudes, both official and social, that discourage arresting, setting appropriate bail for, prosecuting, and even reporting crimes.
Los Angeles and New York are among numerous Democrat-controlled cities across America that have done almost nothing to clear their streets and parks of homeless encampments where drug markets and crimes large and small flourish, and deranged denizens wander freely as they act out the mental illnesses that made them homeless in the first place. The murder of Shells occurred only a few blocks north of Los Angeles’s Skid Row, where more than 5,000 people live in squalid tents on trash-littered sidewalks. It’s likely that Bell was one of them.
All three crimes were unspeakable, but Kupfer’s death had an additional tragic aspect. Alone in the store in the early afternoon, she actually spotted Smith as he entered. Indeed, he had wandered into at least one other establishment a few minutes before in an apparent search for a suitably vulnerable victim. Kupfer could see very well that the 6-foot-3-inch, 190-pound Smith looked dangerous. Kupfer texted a friend that Smith was giving out a “bad vibe.” What she did not do, however, was call 911.
There are all sorts of theories about what to do about the tens of thousands of homeless people, many of them mentally ill and violent, on the streets and in the public-transportation systems of every major city. The current progressive fad is “housing first,” which means leaving them there until governments find the money to build expensive apartment complexes or cute “tiny houses” that will presumably cure them of all their troubles.
But there’s a quicker, more effective way to make public places safe for law-abiding citizens: enforce existing laws designed to maintain public order. There are already plenty of them on the books: prohibitions against littering, drug-dealing, disturbing the peace, defacing and destroying property, camping in public places. Start enforcing fare-evasion laws on public transit. Currently, many cities routinely ignore turnstile-jumpers for fear of looking racist—which means giving free entry on trains, buses, and subway platforms to scofflaws who may not only be annoying but also threats to other people’s lives. Set bail at realistic levels designed to accomplish what putting up bail bonds are supposed to do: ensure that people arrested for committing crimes will show up for their trials instead of skipping out of town to commit more crimes elsewhere.
And it goes without saying that it’s time to end the “defund the police” movement. Eric Adams, New York City’s new mayor, has taken some steps in that direction, promising to beef up law enforcement in the city’s transit system and to put more beat cops onto the streets. No one should have to die because progressive authorities were reluctant to punish the perpetrators for their earlier crimes. And no one should ever, ever feel too embarrassed about what progressives might think to dial 911 when something looks seriously wrong.